A north Belfast republican activist who was arrested and twice refused
bail on an unsubstantiated charge of rioting early this summer, was finally
released on bail this week. A commentary from Sean MacDiarmada (1916
Society Ard Eoin).

The end of this years tramping season has brought more to the people of
North Belfast than the usual relief and easing of tensions. It has
delivered yet another Statement of Intent from the British
administration in Ireland directing a future of oppression and
unimaginable terror under the dominance of localised British command.

Alan Lundy was granted bail by a British judge in a British court
earlier this week. He was on Roe 4 when the news broke. On Roe 4 in
Maghaberry Gaol Republican men, interned for being republican men, live
tortured and engaged in brutal protest imposed by their Gaolers. It is a
place where a whole new world of depravity exists which is little
understood by those of us who have never experienced its unimaginable
wrath.

The impact prison has on the vital routine that binds cohesive family
life occurs at the point of imprisonment. Being hauled from your home
unexpectedly and without reason or explanation, cast in to prison with
no way to ease the rising fear of your loved ones, is surely one of the
most traumatic experiences a human being can endure. Trauma is an
immediate consequence of the internment process and thus the effect can
not be stilled or stayed by eventual release or time.

Alan Lundy will be congratulated on being home. Every time such a
welcome is made his mind will naturally return to those he walked the
yard with in Maghaberry, those who know no other home than hell today.
Gerard McManus, 3 years interned and almost 3 years on protest, still
no trial, entrapped and tortured along with the countless others who
laugh and joke their pain away in a hell that exists within the
comprehension of only those who endure it there and then.

Those who leave that unjust confinement as suddenly as they were entered
into to it will have nowhere to express the affect of such trauma
without that environment being replicated, and the same Maghaberry
imposed isolation will exist as much outside the walls of Maghaberry and
be as present on the street or in the home as it was within the yard or
in the cell. How do we know this? 36 years ago Long Kesh began
manufacturing the exact same psychological consequence for the
generation before us, the generation that raised us and the generation
whose pain lingers still; as it was silenced by Sinn Fein’s alleged need
for “political progress” - or as we know it now, total capitulation.

The Statement of Intent is layered with supremacy as always. Bail in
this case was granted at the end of marching season. Death squads
secured the union with Britain. Those who built and equipped the Death
Squads have been rewarded well. They have secured terms so extreme from
the British government that they can now direct a Unionist militia
against innocent nationalists and Republicans at will.

Men and women deemed capable of challenging Loyalist intentions
irregardless of how unlawful or harmful to the Nationalist community
those intentions are, will be lifted from the street, they will be
interned and tortured on the orders of the Administration and its
advisors until Loyalist intentions, irregardless of how unlawful or
harmful to the Nationalist community those intentions are, have been
completed. We are in the grips of the greatest tide of terror witnessed
in this country for over a century and it is being advertised by the
terrorist, and, consumed by the majority as “peace time”.

No government can ever achieve the right to intern the innocent or to
disappear even temporarily the opposition voice making most progress, no
government has the authority to direct torture against any human being
for any reason, there is no justification in unlawfully denying the
liberty of any being for a moment, but in the case of Alan Lundy this is
what was laid before us, injustice after injustice imposed by unseen
unknown entities, upheld by British courts and justified by the silence
of Sinn Fein and the other British terrorists who claim to be democrats
in order to squander British taxes on gluttony and greed.

We are supposed to rejoice gleefully and without question because the
British state has permitted an innocent Irish man, who they unlawfully
interned, return temporarily to a home he should have never been taken
from in the first place, while the so-called prosecution attempt to
rescue a charge from the tatters of fabricated nonsense used to hold him
for the past few months!

Is this the dividend? Is this the reward? The victory?

Shut your mouth or go to gaol?

We had more rights in the 1940’s than we have today.

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